ort, but there was no longer a
Gardner or a Patteson in the firm. There was no longer for Captain
Whalley an arm-chair and a welcome in the private office, with a bit of
business ready to be put in the way of an old friend, for the sake of
bygone services. The husbands of the Gardner girls sat behind the desks
in that room where, long after he had left the employ, he had kept his
right of entrance in the old man's time. Their ships now had yellow
funnels with black tops, and a time-table of appointed routes like a
confounded service of tramways. The winds of December and June were all
one to them; their captains (excellent young men he doubted not) were,
to be sure, familiar with Whalley Island, because of late years the
Government had established a white fixed light on the north end (with
a red danger sector over the Condor Reef), but most of them would have
been extremely surprised to hear that a flesh-and-blood Whalley still
existed--an old man going about the world trying to pick up a cargo here
and there for his little bark.

And everywhere it was the same. Departed the men who would have nodded
appreciatively at the mention of his name, and would have thought
themselves bound in honor to do something for Dare-devil Harry Whalley.
Departed the opportunities which he would have known how to seize; and
gone with them the white-winged flock of clippers that lived in the
boisterous uncertain life of the winds, skimming big fortunes out of
the foam of the sea. In a world that pared down the profits to an
irreducible minimum, in a world that was able to count its disengaged
tonnage twice over every day, and in which lean charters were snapped up
by cable three months in advance, there were no chances of fortune for
an individual wandering haphazard with a little bark--hardly indeed any
room to exist.

He found it more difficult from year to year. He suffered greatly from
the smallness of remittances he was able to send his daughter. Meantime
he had given up good cigars, and even in the matter of inferior cheroots
limited himself to six a day. He never told her of his difficulties, and
she never enlarged upon her struggle to live. Their confidence in each
other needed no explanations, and their perfect understanding endured
without protestations of gratitude or regret. He would have been shocked
if she had taken it into her head to thank him in so many words, but
he found it perfectly natural that she should tell him she